


The Last of Her-Prologue

by BattleFruit1300



Series: The Last of Her [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: AU, Ellie dies, F/F, It's my first fanfiction, Marlene sucks, Riley does not, Traumatized character, may turn into a whole fic depending on reception, roast me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22596409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BattleFruit1300/pseuds/BattleFruit1300
Summary: I'm sure this has been done a thousand times.Riley is the one to survive instead of Ellie. Just a short AU idea I might or might not run with.
Relationships: Ellie & Riley (The Last of Us)
Series: The Last of Her [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921858
Kudos: 7





	The Last of Her-Prologue

It was never supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to end with the two of them, hugging their legs to themselves on the roof, and waiting to become the monsters they had spent their entire lives learning to fear and kill. They had been bit; a fate considered worse than death by many, but at the very least they were going to go out together, like a terrible and poetic romance. They were going to end the day the same way they started it; with one another.

But they didn’t. Riley waited for her turn, watching her closest friend get paler, her breathe getting progressively shallower until her eyes grew glassy. She kept looking at her hand, and wondering when the pain would start in her head and chest, but it never came. It was almost unfair, but Riley knew by now that the world wasn’t fair, and that it was never about what someone deserved. If it were, Ellie would still be alive, and Riley would have died a long time ago.

It felt like a dream when Ellie went quiet, and a nightmare when she started making noise again, like the dark arm in front of her didn’t truly belong to her, as if the gun she was aiming at the younger girl’s head wasn’t shaking with terror. A certain shadow circled her vision, like looking through a keyhole at the scene before her, and she was shot back to the first time she met Ellie. The way she had swooped in to save her from the boys trying to rob her, the Walkman she lifted off the girl, and her angry, demanding face in the mess hall. Everything that had built up to their awkward kiss on the glass  
counter top rushed through her mind, and the long-held tears started slipping down her cheeks.

When she did pull the trigger, for the briefest of moments she saw her fathers inhuman face looking back at her, but by the time the body hit the ground the image was gone. Ellie was gone. Everything that she had been, her rebellious streak, her freckles in the sunlight, the way she smiled when Riley let her win whatever little game they had been playing that particular day, was now a dead runner laying broken in the gravel. It was wrong in all the worst ways, and her stomach rebelled at the sight. She dropped the gun to hyperventilate into her unbitten hand, before falling back into a sitting position.  
Riley didn’t know how long it took her to move, but when she did, every joint in her body protested. Her head was spinning, and her fingers felt cold. No matter how many times she swallowed, she was still choking on the dryness in her throat, and the over shirt she had pressed into her hand was soaked through with the blood from her now scabbed over bite wound. She stood up numbly, bent down to stroke Ellie's hair one last time before laying her over jacket across her pretty face, and slowly marching back to the doors. The banging from behind the door had long since stopped, and Riley started the long, silent walk back to the quarantine zone.  
*  
Marlene was pointing a gun at her. It didn’t really come as a surprise to Riley, she had expected as much, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t sting just a little. She was shaking, partly from loss and shock, and partly from rage.  
“Marlene”, she said, trying to steady herself. “If I thought I was a danger I wouldn’t have come back. You know how badly I wanted this, to BE a firefly. Why would I put us in danger!?”

“There is no us, not anymore”, came her even toned response. “You’re infected, and I’m sorry, but I CAN’T take this risk. Not with so few of us left.”

The simple, clipped way that Marlene spoke irritated some far away and sleeping part of Riley. She made everything sound so easy when she spoke. Like every problem was simple and had a simple answer. The soldiers need to be thrown out of power? Fight them to the last man. The fireflies were dying faster than they can be replaced? Recruit younger. Riley had been missing for 2 days? She must have changed her mind. Why didn’t she understand that what they were doing wasn’t working?

“Ellie is dead.” 

Her simple statement had left her without any real tone inflection, sounding as hollow as she felt. She could see the flash of regret come and go across Marlene’s face at the news. Riley didn’t know how close the relationship between the leader of the fireflies and Ellie’s mom had been, but she knew they were friends at one point or another. She doesn’t know exactly why she said it, only that she needed someone else to know. Ellie deserved that.

Taking Marlene’s silence for the question it was, she continued, “We were bit. Together. 2 days ago. Ellie’s dead.”

Marlene lowered the gun.


End file.
